Tom and Dave’s BIG Ride

Hi all,

Well… if you´d been getting worried that you hadn´t had any emails for a while, you can stop now. This one will be a bit of a monster. The past 2 weeks have been pretty epic, with both ups and downs (not just on the road!) and some pretty awesome riding. Our route took us principally along Ruta 40: a very famous route spanning almost the entire length of the country. It´s renowned for its inhospitable conditions - desert, mountains and in some places pampas as far as the eye can see. It certainly wasn´t a choice we took lightly, but at least it´d start to prepare us for the riding pretty much up until Peru.
 
So… here goes. Leaving Bariloche was pretty tough for both of us as we´d got pretty attached to Penthouse 1004 and we´d also had some great times. As a result we left pretty late, drawing out our goodbyes to Kristen, Ed, Natalie and Charlie until about 1 o´clock. We´d originally intended to be gone by about 10!!! Not a great start. Then we hit the road, riding into the best tailwind we´d had in ages. 60Km down we saw something exciting… It was Alain, a Swiss cyclist powering along the same way as we were. He was fully laden, just like us, but in addition he had a support vehicle in the form of his wife Jovita´s pick-up! Why carry all that gear, we thought, including the heaviest metal floorstanding pump, when you have a dirty great truck following you along! Anyways, Alain gave me (Dave) a chance to brush up on my French whilst we cranked 80km more to give us a 140km day. What a great start! Alain and Jovita even bought us lunch and some nectarines! Result!
 
The next day, however, didn´t see such favourable riding conditions. We had no wind at all. It´s funny that when you´ve been praying for no wind all the way when you get it the sun´s SO hot that you can´t ride 20 metres without breaking into a sweat! Luckily we had lots of water so we kept pretty hydrated until we reached a very small spring by the road where we drenched ourselves in cold water and found the only shade for 20 or 30 miles around. I think the passing coachloads of tourists were pretty surprised to see two bedraggled cyclists standing by the edge of the road, in the middle of nowhere, throwing mugs of water over eachother! Anyways… That was a bad day, but things were about to get better… After staying overnight in an indigenous Mapuche commune we set off for Zapala, where icy cold drinks and a fruit binging session washed all of the problems of the previous day away.
 
The stretch from Zapala to Chos Malal saw some fantastic scenery and saw the hills rise sharply above us. The first 60km saw us battling against a pretty bad headwind until Las Lajas where we´d intended to stock up on food and make some sandwiches for lunch. However, it was gone 1.30pm meaning that everything and everyone stops for siesta until 5 or 6 o´clock! We seem to be pretty good at turning up at towns just as the siesta has started!! Luckioly we found a little shop and bought biscuits and crisps before having a chat with some very inquisitive kids who wanted to know all about where we´d come from, where we were going and just about everything else too! Eventually we had to leave them in the street as we wanted to clock a few more Kms before camping up. Those next few kilometres culminated in us finding a very strange thing indeed… A river!!!!! Wow!! We both just had to stop and have a wash there. It turned out to be a lot further from the road than it originally appeared but, after a little hike through the desert, we made it to the river. The water was pretty grey and silty, but Tom splashed his way into the deepest part anyways, stripped down to his boxers and started to wash. I did too. Then, a couple of minutes later, i turn around to see some kind of grey/black monster in front of me… I double take, and realise it´s only Tom with a load of mud over himself! “What the hell are you doing?” ”I´m exfoliating” came the reply. Only Tom could think of such a thing as this, but it was really good and i soon joined in. We left the river feeling refreshed and ready to get into our sleeping bags a good deal cleaner than we´d been over the past few days.
 
A pretty awesome sunrise gave us a good start to the next days ride to Chos Malal. The sky really looked as if it was on fire! Alas, the first 40km didn´t turn out to be so amazing as sunrise with pretty much 40km of straight with a slight incline and some headwind for good measure. Excellent!! We climbed and climbed until the scenery began to improve and mountains began to rise around us making for a great 8km descent before riding into Chos Malal.
 
This place was great compared to the last few days of desert! The streets were lined with trees and water was running everywhere! Amazing! We turned up at the Camping Municipal, paying the princely sum of 4 pesos each (about 80p) to pitch up, before heading out to get some dinner. Also at the site were a couple of Swiss cyclists, Mosi and Ruth, who were cycling the same route as us, and a very interesting bunch of motorcyclists who invited us over for an Irish coffee and a bit of banter. It turned out that one of them, Kevin, held the world records for motorbiking both around the world and from Alaska to Ushuaia! He´d done the first in 34 days and the second in just 19 days! Crazy! And we thought we´d been getting sore backsides! Suitably impressed we returned to the tent to get some sleep along with a huge amount of steak that the motorcyclists had left over.
 
8th January-Leaving Chos Malal
 
Our early start wasn´t as early as we hoped, with the stop button being hit instead of the snooze! However we were on the bikes still well before 8am in attempt to avoid the heat. The day started with a huge hill climb out of Chos Malal (we are honestly not making these place names up!) which lasted 18kms and took us over 1500m high which was quiet a mornings workout we agreed! We also had a head wind instead of the prevailing winds in our direction which we hoped for! To ad insult to injury my speedos´s battery had gone flat and I was left guessing my speed and with out the fun of guessing average speed ect to keep me occupied!
 
However the hill had a random and funny prize at the top… an Argentinian guy driving in an old clapped out Fiat Uno waving frantically at us. He slammed on the brakes and came speeding back to us and stopped his car. He came out grinning like a chesire cat offering us a cold bottle of what he was drinking. As it was around 9am and he was driving one assumed that it was a nice cold bottle of fizzy pop. But this is South America and it happened our chum was enjoying some sweet alchopop as his beverage of preferance whilst driving first thing in the morning, which was immeadiately evident on the first sniff. But nevertheless the spontinaity and randomness of his charitable event left us smiling. 
After 7.15 ours riding and 128 kms we reached Barancas and a small campsite. The same Swiss couple we had previously met were already there after a lift and kindly greeted us with a cold beer in our our of need-perfect!
 
The next town on our destination of any size was Malargue which we reached on the 9th, after some serious heat and very tough rippio on route 40. At the camping municipal we were met by Stephen Sarah, an English guy and his Scottish wife. They had previously done some cycle touring in South America and were now teaching in Santiago. They were an extremely useful font of knowledge as were pestered them about information on the route North and what to expect. They we all to happy to help and even offered us a place to stay if we wished to visit Santiago. They also fed us melon, crisps and wine on our arrival…we must have hunger written across our faces when our eyes light up to the sight of good food after the road! There was a large regional festival just starting in the town with everywhere a hive of activity. We got to witness a cycle race in the town center, we considered joining in, but off course we should be resting so we just had to sit and watch with an ice cream!
 
11th January- THE EPIC 203KM DAY to San Rafael.
 
Ok so this isn´t maybe the most exciting thing to read about, but it was certainly a milestone and a highlight for us breaking 200km in one days riding (we waated to average 80kms a day). The roads were literally the straitest we had ever seen(and thats saying something consiering the pictures of previous roads on the site!)
With a constant head wind we took turns of 10 minute stints in front to give the other person a break and to keep spped up. By early afternoon we stopped in a small lonely petrol garage and rested after 140kms. I then noticed the wind turn to a tail wind. It was to good an oportunity to miss. We ended up chasing a lighting storm over San Rafael and being chased by one by Malargue. We made frighteningly god progress and enjoyed a fantastic decent into San Rafael. Eventually we settled for hotel as all the hostels were full. I sat on my bed and it snapped, so the moral here is you don´t always get what you pay for! San Rafael itself was bigger and busier than maybe we expected, but was also pretty with tree lined roads and nice plazas. It also had a fantastic bike shop Bicipartes where after checking about 1000 other shops actually had front racks…and 2 of them!! After spending nearly a day there and being bombarded with questions from the shop owners riduculously inquistive 6year old daughter, we eventually left the shop (in near darnkess) with shiny new racks and were very grateful for the amout of time they spent on getting them to fit. In near darkness, where we camped on the edge of town.
 
13th January – San Rafael to San Carlos.
 
We climbed very gently out of town in some rather dull pampas surroundings. We stopped about 2.5 hours in and rested under a tree with some food. We then saw a familar figure bobbing towards us. It was the Welsh Rabbit Oliver again…anyone would thing it was a small continent. We rode with him at quiet a silly pace to San Carlos 127kms later. There we found a perfect little campsite with a swimming pool!! It was amazing to jump into the clod water after the heat of the day. We then used their asardo to cook up a big meal. They even had table tennis there for us to use, best of all was we had the place to ourselves!
 
14th Mendoza here we come!!
 
It was a little sad leaving such a nice little place, but with Mendoza jsut over 100km away we were hungry to get there! The start of the ride was beautiful with orchards of fruit and vineyards lining the road. there was a constant tarin of trucks carrying fruit and vegetables past us the whole time, with the air rich of these smells. However, as we neared Mendoza we entered a much more urban lanscape, which was hot, busy and engulfed in fumes! We were happy to make the center and find a nice hostel with a swimming pool. We are now in the process of planning some trek/climb and also a bike wine tour!
 
Well Until next time aidos
 
Tom and Dave
 

Hi all,
 
We hope you´ve all had fantastic holidays, got loads of great pressies and ate much more than you should´ve! we certainly have!
 
Apologies for the lack of updates over xmas and new years. We´ve not been doing a huge amount (apart from eating and resting!) so thought we´d leave it until after we´d ridden to Bariloche for the next update.
 
So… after we arrived at Puerto Montt from Puerto Chacabuco we tried, unsuccessfully, to find new racks. 2 days´searching around and wandering about town was enough for us so we decided to move on. Puerto Montt was a far cry from most of the other towns we´d visited before. It was a lot grubbier and very much a local place where tourists weren´t all that common. Luckily for us, though, that meant that everything was cheaper!
 
A whopping 20km on saw us arrive at Puerto Varas where we´d spend the next 6 days before xmas. This place was quite the opposite from P. Montt with a casino, loads of travellers and some really cool excursions to do. We decided to go canyoning. It really was AMAZING!!!! jumping off of 30ft cliffs into waterfall plunge pools and sliding down rocky chutes smoothed off by the icy cold waters running down from Volcan Calabuco. We also me a few really nice people who we spent xmas with. There were Cat and Bob from the States who very kindly donated us their Argentina map as an xmas present. Thanks!! Then there was Jo who was sooo kind to us. She was an Aussie girl who´d just got back from Rapa Nui. She fed us LOADS of cakes and helped us out with the appalling chilean postal service.
 
Xmas was celebrated on the 24th with 20 others at a big old house owned by the hostel we were at – Hostel Marguoya. Everybody chipped in with making and buying food and it really was a christmas to remember! Tom was loving the veggie lasagne they made in particular. Me, i was all over the MASSIVE leg of ham that was sitting on the table. Yum! After much wine and lots of food the night before we rested on the lake shore for xmas day and spent a bit of time reading. I managed to find a pretty cheesy book about deer. It was kind of biblical in its plot but it was all i could find n the shelf! Tom ended up with a bad american detective book.
 
Boxing day saw us head off for Osorno and the longest day of riding so far. We knew the road would be fast, but 90km in 3 hours was CRAAAAAAAZY!!!! We just couldn´t believe it! Once we reached Osorno (90km) we thought we´d carry on after stopping at a hypermarket (much excitement was had!) for another 50km to Entre Lagos where we cam,ped up before hitting the pass to Bariloche the next day. We were both SO pleased with our day total of 142Km!
 
Then came the hills! To make it even more difficult, the whole morning we were riding through drizzle up in the clouds. The road meandered through some of the densest forest we´d both ever seen. It really was spectacular and made the climb a lot more bearable! We cruised, slowly, up to Chilean customs where i found i´d lost my entry card and had to get a new one written out. Luckily the guards didn´t kick up a fuss. Then it was on to our next camp ground around 900m in altitude. We rode about 12km after the chilean customs looking desperately for water and some flat ground to camp. It´s pretty crazy that we could hardly get any water in a rainforest, but the streams were so far down from the road through dense vegetation that half the time we couldn´t get down. Eventually we found a drainage chute which i got the unfortunate task of scaling to fill up. That was rather scary! A few hundred metres on our fortunes bettered further when we saw an abandoned warehouse where we cooked up and slept.
 
A few hundred metres of climbing on the 28th saw us reach the top of Paso International Cardinal Antonio Semora (1321m), take the obligatory photos, and begin a truly epic descent to Argentine customs some 20km away. The scenery almost instantly turned dry as we rode through the area sheltered from rain by the mountains. The temperature rose and the road wound through some pretty fantastic scenery all the way to Villa Agñostura where we camped alongside the lake. It was a little worrying as all along the road there were sgns saying no camping but we had next to no money so had no choice!! On from there we cycled 70km with a nice tailwind to Bariloche where we had an AWESOME new year!
 
We stayed in Penthouse 1004. If you ever go to Bariloche you MUST stay in this hostel! They´re so nice and the party they laid on for new years was great. 55 people all contributed different dishes from around the world making more food than even Tom could possibly eat! Everybody there was so friendly and there was lots of opportunity to speak some English at last New year´s day was spent on the beach relaxing in blazing hot sunshine and swimming in Lago Nahuel Huapi. Perfect!
 
And that brings us to today. Hopefully we´ll clock over 100km to a little lake we saw on the map. We´re now gonna ride 1250Km to Mendoza through some pretty barren desert on Ruta 40, a very famous road in Argentina. Lots of scorpions, tarantulas, and very surprisingly parrots! We´d better watch out – not for the parrots though. They´re relatively harmless.
 
Anyways, Happy new year!!!
 
Until next time,
 
Tom and Dave